Copyleft licences are the only true free software licences. All other open source licenses are just proprietariable.
What do those words mean? What is proprietariable and copyleft? Or is that the joke?
Not a joke.
Copy left is like the Robin Hood of the copyright world. Basically, it’s a type of licensing where, sure, you can use, modify, and distribute the copyrighted work, but there’s a catch. You have to give the same rights to anyone else for any derivative works. So, if you modify the work, you can’t just slap a new copyright on it and restrict its use. It’s a way to ensure that the work stays free for everyone to use. It’s pretty popular in the open source community. It’s like copyright turned on its head, hence the name “copyleft”.
It’s a shame the strategy is now failing because software as a service is so popular. Nothing in the GPL forces you to distribute your changes if you don’t distribute the program. So just put the program on a webserver and let users interact through an API and hey presto, steal as much GPL code as you like.
Everyone crucified MongoDB when they tried to create a licence that prevents this, and FSF have declared that the problem can’t be solved with licences and everyone just has to boycott non-free software (good luck!).
End of free software as we know it, IMHO.
Wasn’t the Affero GPL (AGPL) created exactely to enforce copyleft in a SaaS environment?
Quoting from the GNU website:
[The AGPL] has one added requirement: if you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them to download the source code corresponding to the modified version running there.
proprietariable just means the code can be taken and rerelased as proprietary (no freedoms all rights reserved).
You think that a license that imposes more restrictions on its use is more free than one that imposes fewer???
Where my
Apache-2.0gang at?This argument reminds me of the Tolerance Paradox described by Karl Popper, who stated that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
In the licensing context, yes, the Apache and Expat licenses may grant your users the freedom to create proprietary software out of your works, but at the cost of sacrificing all the basic freedoms of all the users that will use the derived non-free product.
So, like Popper said that you should prefer removing the “smaller” freedom for a society of being intolerant in order to guarantee the “greater” one of remaining tolerant in the future, since you still have to choose which freedoms you are going to negate, it’s preferable to use copyleft and impede the “smaller” freedom of creating proprietary software than not using it and allowing the crushing of future users’ fundamental rights.
Well, it depends on your perspective. Copyleft licenses restrict downstream developers in order to protect the rights of downstream users.
MITboi here.
deleted by creator
All that really does is guarantee that the professor will catch anyone cheating
The meme is gigachad not 9000 IQ so your objection is overruled
would be easier than to try and catch people slipping eachother code, no?
It’s really easy to detect duplicate programs. I’ve failed multiple students due to cheating on assignments. Code obfuscation is incredibly easy to detect using something like MOSS .
Of course gigachad uses a thinkpad
most new projects are in MIT?
My grades weren’t good enough so I license most of my code Community College Licence.
Fucking LOL
That’s certainly possible, but it’s only lukewarm open-source. People can prefer spicy licenses.
Apache2 is preferred nowadays.
This is part of why universities generally have it in the admissions agreement that the university will hold copyright over all that you do for your classes
Wow that’s shitty
Not pictured: OP and all their classmates failing the assignment and being investigated for plagiarism
Was either required or encouraged in my programming classes.
We were required to have our repos be private.
'Cause I’m G PL
Yes I’m the real PL
All you other letter PLs
Aren’t actually PLsThat is literally me (after the assignment period ends :") )
This guy is a joke.
Based on commit history, you can prove that you did it originally
Free as in freedom
The commit history is trivial to rewrite.
this is the way.
deleted by creator
Fixed it:
Chad GPL license: i made my code open source, so it stays open source. proprietary users seethe harder.
Virgin WTFPL user: yeah my code is meant to be open source, but you can do with it whatever you want!
WTFPL is the femboy of copyright
Nonsense, Femboys are far better.
GPL is too restrictive. I prefer MIT/CC0/BSD 0 clause.
None of these licenses give patent protection to your users. If you’re going “permissive”, you should use Apache.
I rarely run into patents but I could see that being a strong argument for Apache.
I prefer the Do Whatever The Fuck You Want License.
That’s a good one too! I’ve used it a few times and it’s always very satisfying. It really feels like you truly threw something into the void of the internet and let it be free.
Why is too restrictive?
I don’t like how it forces everything it touches to be GPL. Even if the works it touches are unrelated to the original functionality. It restricts what I can do with the code I wrote without the help of the GPL’ed code. For example, if I write an entire game: gameplay, physics, renderer, networking, etc., all myself. Then I need to include a snippet of GPL’ed code for any reason, all that work now no longer belongs to me. I, the worker, no longer have access to the fruit of my labor. Instead all of it, disproportionally, is given away to the collective world. I lose the fruits of my labor.
With others, I do not. You can give your code to the community, you can even adopt licenses to say if you improve the code you must also open source it and give it to the community but when you then say and you also have to give away any code it touches inconsequential to it’s functionality. That feels too restrictive for me. I honestly would like to see people adopt a middle ground. LGPL does this afaik and it feels like a better choice than GPL or BSD if you are trying to keep just your creation and it’s derivatives open.
If you use my snippet, I want your game. If you don’t agree, then you can’t use my snippet. The purpose of the GPL is simply to prevent people who don’t share from benefitting from people who do, which I think is pretty fair.
Sure, it’s a disagreement on what fair sharing is, and honestly. I don’t want your code if I can’t meet the intent of the license. That’s fine. It’s just the reason I don’t GPL my code. It feels like I am enacting restrictions on someone else that doesn’t feel fair.
You still own the code you release under GPL. the restriction you are describing is actually caused by the non-copyleft licences you claim to prefer. If you choose to use MIT, you are limiting which libraries you can use. If you had picked GPL to begin with, you can use any library.
I don’t exclusively own my own works anymore. Which is different than just owning your own work.
If the exclusive ownership of something, in order to sell it, is the primary choice driving factor of a project. Then you should just make it proprietary. Anything else would limit your margins, since someone else can just fork your project, change it and make it proprietary themselves. A dual license is sometimes used in this case as well.
You can sell GPL licensed software. You don’t have to publish the source code publicly online.
Then I need to include a snippet of GPL’ed code for any reason
A snippet? Surely you don’t need to include a snippet of someone else’s labor.
all that work now no longer belongs to me
It does belong to you. You still own the copyright of the work. You can still license it however you want, you just also need to make it available under the GPL.
A snippet? Surely you don’t need to include a snippet of someone else’s labor.
I mean, it’s an example sometimes people want to just include a library to say, parse a file format. A small snippet of code that could be GPLed, all just to support a random file format that the users want.
It does belong to you. You still own the copyright of the work. You can still license it however you want, you just also need to make it available under the GPL.
Eh, I guess I can dual-license it but it still removes my exclusivity of ownership which is important in our capitalistic society in order to gain money which you use to live. Essentially GPL removes a large way to gain money. If you offer something for free but you have to compile it, or you offer it pre-compiled but paid for. Someone is typically just going to just compile the free code and offer binaries on their own site.
removes my exclusivity of ownership
Again, using GPL’d code does not remove your ownership of the code you wrote. Using other people’s code in general does remove your exclusivity of ownership, regardless of license, since the code other people wrote belongs to them.
Essentially GPL removes a large way to gain money.
- What you are saying is you should be entitled to make money off of someone else’s work. If you want to make money on something, you may be required to do the work yourself.
- Individuals writing software and selling licenses for is not, in the grand scheme of things, a “large way” to get money. The vast majority of money made from writing software is programmers being paid to write software for someone else who will own the license. Software written under “permissive” licenses is by and large used to create wealth for the owning class, not individual programmers.
Using other people’s code in general does remove your exclusivity of ownership, regardless of license, since the code other people wrote belongs to them.
it removes my exclusivity of ownership over my own code. Not talking about the small snippet that I don’t have exclusive ownership over. Pretty basic distinction here.
What you are saying is you should be entitled to make money off of someone else’s work. If you want to make money on something, you may be required to do the work yourself.
I’d gladly pay them a smaller fee but that’s the reason I don’t GPL my code. I don’t feel like the fee the GPL charges by default (the requirement to license all the code it touches into GPL) is fair. You clearly disagree and that’s fine. I won’t use your code.
Individuals writing software and selling licenses for is not, in the grand scheme of things, a “large way” to get money. The vast majority of money made from writing software is programmers being paid to write software for someone else who will own the license.
I’m an indie game developer so I disagree. How I get my money is selling copies of my software is largely how I make money. If you want to argue that in the business corporate software complex everyone is just writing code for money and no one is selling it as a copy, that’s fine, I don’t care about that work. I just know why I don’t like GPLing my code. It’s too restrictive for me and thus I feel it’s unfair to ask of other people to follow.
it removes my exclusivity of ownership over my own code.
Your statement is false. It does not remove or diminish your exclusivity of ownership over your own code. That’s just not how copyright works. I don’t know how else to put it.
I’d gladly pay them a smaller fee
If I ever wrote code you wanted to use in a game you wanted to sell, and you reached out to me, I’d just let you use the code under a different license for free. My main concern is that corporations would freeload off my work. Some people wouldn’t even do it for any fee. I think that’s silly, but they get to set the terms of how we use their code.
selling copies of my software is largely how I make money
That’s great! You are part of a tiny group of people who manage to make money this way, and that’s no small accomplishment. More power to you, and I wish you more success. If you feel comfortable revealing it here, what game(s) do you sell?
Not exactly. For example, you can’t make the whole thing, GPL snippet included, available under MIT. You can only license your own contribution however you want (in addition to GPL).
Yes, you don’t own the thing you didn’t make.
That seems a somewhat contrived example. Yes, it can theoretically happen - but in practice it would happen with a library, and most libraries are LGPL (or more permissive) anyway. By contrast, there have been plenty of stories lately of people who wrote MIT/BSD software, and then got upset when companies just took the code to add in their products, without offering much support in return.
Also, there’s a certain irony in saying what essentially amounts to, “Please license your code more permissively, because I want to license mine more restrictively”.
Well, remember, this is why I don’t GPL my own code, not why I don’t use GPL’ed code. I want to provide to others what I want to be provided to me. I make my games from Godot, MIT-licensed. Allows people to make commercially viable games. I also contribute what I can to Godot and attempt to backport engine improvements to Godot when I can. This exchange is fair to me and I believe fair to Godot.
Games exist as products directly to the consumer. There are reasons why GPL’ed games haven’t been commercially viable and those who’ve GPLed their game (after they have made tons of money from it) still don’t include the art. They still want to keep the game as profitable as possible while GPLing what they can.
Essentially the GPL is at odds with our capitalistic society, which is fine, our capitalistic society could be a lot better if we were more socialist or communist. The place it breaks down though is that we are still in a capitalistic society and people need to be able to sell their works for money.
C U C K
Get out of here with that bullshit name-calling.
what u mean bro mit license is also good
Doesn’t weaponize copyright, what’s even the point
